Welcome to the blog of a living being on planet Earth, a holder of (man-mandated) citizenship of India, and so on and so forth! I hope you find it worthwhile to observe the parts of my journey in this lifetime that I share here. "natant" means floating.

June 24, 2013

ignoring climate change events at our own peril

The human, animal and ecological tragedy which unfolded in the wake of extremely heavy rainfall over the Himalayan mountains in Uttarakhand state 10 days ago, is yet another wake-up alarm for us (Indians) and everyone else elsewhere.I wrote an editorial on this issue recently in the newspaper I work for currently. Here is what I wrote:

Ignore
at own peril

Last
week's unfolding of human and ecological consequences of extreme weather events
raises several red flags As
an economy we need to come out of our lethargy in planning, accounting,
budgeting and enforcing policies for mitigating the huge negative economic
consequences of climate change-induced events abetted in a large part by
ecology-insensitive development models. This is one immediate and glaring lesson to draw from the
unprecedented loss of human lives and the massive suffering inflicted on
humans, animals, ecology, places and structures in the Himalayan hills due to
sudden and extremely high levels of rainfall in the region over a week ago.
Extreme weather events are not new to our country given its vast expanse and
multiple eco-systems but they have become more extreme and more frequent. Like
Mumbai's extreme rainfall event of July 26-27 2005 and the recent
cloudbursts-accompanied extreme rainfall over the Himalayan region in
Uttarakhand, the extreme weather events have also become much faster in their
onset, without even a day's warning sign.

Climate change deniers might argue against the very
concept of global warming caused by dangerous levels of carbon dioxide and
other deadly gases in the atmosphere. If they are right we can only be set back
a few decades in our rapid development drive due to the high costs associated
with mitigation measures. But if they are wrong and climate change-induced
disasters cause all-round devastation will not only not develop the economy but
it will set it back by centuries.

India came out with its first national action plan on
climate change exactly five years ago, on June 30, 2008 to be precise. It was
not exactly an early start but still it had to come out one day and was welcomed
by one and all. However, red flags were evident even then in the criticisms of
the action plan, the pre-dominant one being the climate change plan was only a
bundling of existing national plans on renewable energy, water, agriculture and
a few others. Much of what the plan detailed was already in the open and what
was required was a new, dynamic plan marked with much-needed urgency in
financing, implementation and enforcement. Ironically, the national climate
change plan had a separate mission for sustaining the Himalayan ecosystem which
included adoption of best practice norms for infrastructure construction,
promotion of sustainable tourism and regulation of tourist inflows. None of
these apparently got translated from the written, lofty word to ground-level
hard physical enforcement. If this continues to be this nation's track record
then we can very well kiss double-digit GDP growth rates good-bye since extreme
weather events leaves behind ferocious economic consequences, immediate and
futuristic, and which tends to have severe cascading impacts on the entire
country.

A new World Bank report, released earlier this month,
focused on climate extremes and regional impacts, and it stated the likelihood
of 4 degrees celsius global warming being reached or exceeded this century has
increased in the absence of near-term actions and further commitments to reduce
emissions. This rise in temperatures in India is, as per the World Bank report,
projected to cause 10 per cent increase in annual-mean monsoon intensity and a
15 per cent increase in its year-to-year variability, which taken together
imply chances of extreme wet monsoon increasing to once every 10 years from
once every 100 years. At other times, the report states the abruptcy in the
Indian monsoon, identified as a potential tipping element of the Earth system,
can cause drier, lower rainfall conditions in South Asia.

The onus to mitigate such unprecedented changes
in our country lies with this government, and will lie more so on the next one.
One hopes the allure of rapid development does not continue to blind the
government and the electorate at the cost of our country's already-fragile
ecology.